The last thing you want your organization to become is a cautionary tale about poor encryption policy that leads to a detrimental and embarrassing security breach. There’s no reason you and your team need to learn the hard way about enterprise data encryption strategies. Study up on the different tools designed to prevent data from being accessed by unauthorized parties. The worldwide market for encryption software will reach $1.8 billion in the next two years, according to research firm Global Industry Analysts, so there is no shortage of vendors competing to sell you myriad products that cover every possible data vulnerability you’ll face.
You won’t need to buy in to every sales pitch—only you know your organization’s priorities and can assess where the risk lies. But consider the vast landscape of devices and networks that need protection: desktops, laptops mobile devices, removable media, storage devices, servers, cloud services, routers, the corporate web site, even Digital Rights Management (DRM) for proprietary intellectual property. And also the different ways to encrypt different parts of a system: full disk encryption, file-level encryption, WPA2-ENT, SSL, along with an alphabet soup of encryption algorithms. Read on for suggestions about what to look for in enterprise encryption solutions for your organization, as well as a roundup of specific products you might want to consider.